


Exposure Therapy

by anythingbutplatonic



Series: Olicity Hiatus Road Trip Collection [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Astraphobia, Discussion of nightmares, F/M, Insomnia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reference to one incident of attempted strangulation, References to panic/anxiety attacks, Summer of Olicity, olicity road trip, which you'll recognize when you see it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4624344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Some nights were rougher than others."</p><p>Part of my new Olicity Hiatus Road Trip fic series. Takes place a couple nights after "Love And Other Languages", but you don't have to have read that to make sense of this fic, it can be read on its own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exposure Therapy

Some nights were rougher than others. 

Some nights, a gentle touch and hushed words weren’t enough to bring him out of the panicky haze that followed a nightmare, and he’d stare right through her with round, fearful eyes as if she were nothing but an apparition, a mirage, a trick of his mind. 

On these nights, Felicity had learned not to follow him when he got out of bed and left the room. There were some things he still insisted on doing by himself,  _for_  himself, and she had listened when he’d told her to trust in him and simply let him do what his mind and body needed. 

It still made her chest ache each time she rolled over in bed - in a hotel, in a rented apartment, in a beachside cabin on the water - and found the space next to her empty, knowing that there were some things she simply couldn’t fix with a walk along the beach or a soft kiss to his spiky hair, which was finally starting to grow out after the brutal treatment it had received a month or so earlier.

The one thing she had really hated about the whole League of Assassins debacle was the fact that they had cut his hair. It sounded silly, she knew it did, because  _that_  had been the least of their problems when they’d had the full force of Ra’s al Ghul’s sword-wielding warriors turned against them, and yet - it had been the one thing that had turned her stomach the most. Not the dark clothes with the deadly-looking weapons strapped to the waist, not the hard gaze of his eyes, not even the way he had so willingly responded to a name that was not his own - “ _Al Sah-him” -_ but his hair. His beautiful hair, cropped so short it was barely there any more. 

It was all wrong. He had looked all wrong. Not  _her_  Oliver, who had taken off her glasses so carefully before kissing her. Not  _her_  Oliver, who had refused to say goodbye because it wasn’t the end. Not  _her_  Oliver, who had stumbled over his words in an ironically rather good impression of her when he’d asked her out on a date for the first (and last) time. 

Not  _her_  Oliver, who had told her that he no longer wanted to put her second to being The Arrow, and who had whisked her away on a road trip far away from Starling City with an  _I want to be with you_  and  _Come with me_. 

It had been like something out of a movie, except it was real and it was actually happening, her and Oliver together, away from Starling City, with nothing but time in which to get to know each other, not as partners or teammates or co-vigilantes - none of which she was opposed to, of course, because it had been what had brought them together in the first place - but as two people who loved each other more than it was possible to say, though they had both tried, numerous times. 

Just like  _The Notebook_ , except they both had all of their memories intact, and nobody died at the end.

But some nights were still hard.

***

On one such night, there was a thunderstorm. The lightning cracked against the sky like giant snake tongues, and the claps of thunder were loud enough to make it feel as though the entire beach hut was shaking, though Felicity knew that this was impossible. 

Oliver had refused her offer of coming to bed with her, his body rigid with lines of tension, his discomfort plainly written on his face. Even now, she guessed, storms frightened him, though he tried not to show it. 

But she couldn’t sleep while knowing that he was somewhere in the hut, distressed and in need of comfort. Not that he would ever admit it. Oliver was as stubborn as he was proud, and no amount of fresh air or distance between them and Starling City was going to change  _that_. 

(She wouldn’t want it to, anyway. He wouldn’t be her Oliver if it did.)

Shoving on her glasses in the darkness of the bedroom, a bleary-eyed glance at the alarm clock next to the bed told her it was past 2am. The storm outside showed no signs of letting up, though the thunder seemed to have died down at last; she could hear the spray of rain against the windows and the flickering glare of the lightning as it struck, casting strange shadows on the walls.

Oliver hadn’t come to bed.

Her head told her not to worry, that he’d probably just fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, which was where she had left him several hours before, him reassuring her that he’d be fine, that he’d join her soon. 

Her heart told her something else, though. It told her to go after him and seek him out, to check on him, make sure that he really was as okay as he’d told her he was, because he hadn’t yet completely shaken his old habit of lying about how he was feeling to protect the feelings of others, though she knew he was trying. 

And he  _did_  try, so hard, every day, to be the man he so desperately wanted to be, the man she so strongly believed he was. 

It just made her love him all the more for it. 

Rolling over onto her back, she pushed up her glasses to rub at her eyes before reaching over to grab an old, faded sweater of Oliver’s that he’d left on his side of the bed that morning. It was chilly in the hut, and she’d only worn a tank top and pyjama shorts to bed, on the assumption that she wouldn’t be alone in it. The sweater was comically large on her, the sleeves coming down way past her fingers, and she probably looked like she was wearing a potato sack, but it was 2am and nobody was around but her and Oliver, and she didn’t care. It was warm and it smelled like him, and that was enough, almost, to calm the rapid beating of her heart as she left the bedroom and padded out in her bare feet to search him out.

Alarm bells went off in her head when she reached the living room and he wasn’t there, a spare blanket still neatly folded over the back of the couch, untouched. Her palms, cocooned as they were in the too-big sleeves of her - well, Oliver’s - sweater, began to sweat, and her mind instantly jumped to all kinds of horrible conclusions that she knew, realistically, hadn’t happened. 

 _Calm down, Felicity_ , she told herself firmly.  _So he’s not in the living room. So what? You’re freaking out over nothing, Smoak. Get it together. There’s nobody here but you and nobody else around for miles. Oliver_ is _here, somewhere, and you just have to find him._

“Oliver?” she called out, moving from the living room to the kitchen, which was also empty, the chrome finishings gleaming ominously in the glow of the lightning outside. “Oliver, where are you?” 

A sudden, loud clap of thunder made her jump, and she caught sight of herself in the window over the sink, her hair a blonde cloud around her face, her glasses slightly crooked on her nose.

And she  _definitely_  looked like a potato sack in Oliver’s sweater.  _Ugh_. 

Moving on, she went through the kitchen and headed for the back porch, where there was a small wooden patio with a table and chairs, for dining outside when the weather was nice. 

And she found him.

She could see him through the glass doors, sitting in one of the wicker chairs close to the balcony, looking out in the direction of the open sea in front of him, watching the lightning over the horizon where the black water met the bluish-purplish-greyish sky, thick with storm clouds. 

Her first thought was how lonely he looked, sitting outside in the rain and wind all alone.

Her second thought was,  _Oliver Queen, what the hell are you doing sitting outside in a thunderstorm in your pyjamas?_

Reaching up on her tiptoes, she stretched to unlock the doors that led to the patio, pushing down her rising fear at the thought of stepping outside into the horrid weather. Felicity wrapped her arms around herself as she gingerly picked her way across the damp patio, sliding the door carefully shut behind her but leaving the latch on so that they wouldn’t be locked out.

It was  _cold_ , colder than she’d expected, her toes already turning to blocks of ice, and why hadn’t she thought to put on slippers? She should have put on slippers. And pants, judging by the goosebumps that erupted all along her legs, making her shiver. She had totally forgotten about slippers and pants.  _Damn_ , it really was freezing out here. 

Which brought her back to Oliver, who hadn’t yet noticed her presence, so engrossed he was in watching the storm play out before him. 

“Hey,” she called out softly when she reached him, her voice barely audible over the sound of the wind and intermittent thunder, but he heard her regardless; he shifted where he sat, turning to face her, the surprise on his face turning into a smile almost instantly, the smile he reserved just for her, the one that made a delicious warmth spread through her body from her head to her toes. 

Pulling the sweater down so that it covered more of her bare, cold legs, she perched on the arm of the chair, tucking herself in close to him so that she could leach some of the heat from his body - and really, how was he still so warm when it was so cold out here? 

He turned so that their faces were inches apart. His smile widened. “Hi.”

“Oliver,” she began slowly, “why are you sitting out here in the thunderstorm when there’s a perfectly good and, more importantly,  _warm_  bed inside that would definitely be a lot more comfortable than this?”

Felicity kept her tone light, conversational even, but something more serious tugged at the edges of her words.  _Talk to me. Tell me what you need_.  _I want to help_.

Instead of answering, he asked her a question himself. “Have you heard of exposure therapy?”

A clap of thunder made her flinch, pressing in closer to him, giving her a moment before she answered. “Is that the one that’s based on the theory that, the more often a person is exposed to the situation or conditions that scare them, the more they become accustomed to those conditions, until they’re no longer afraid?” 

Oliver nodded. “I thought it might help. Being out here, I mean. I thought that if I could just...expose myself to it, get as close to the storm as possible without running scared, that I could get used to it. That it wouldn’t scare me any more.”

Felicity’s breath caught in her chest. “Oh, Oliver...”

He continued, “My first night back in Starling City, when I came back from the island, there was a storm like this, a bad one. That night, I had a nightmare, about Sara and the Gambit. I heard her screaming, begging me to hold onto her, but I couldn’t. The current was too strong, and it pulled her under. And I could still hear her, in my head, screaming for me not to let her go. When I woke up, I had my hands around my mother’s throat.”

“Walter had to pull me off her. He had to  _restrain_  me from attacking my own mother. What kind of son does that?” 

It was a rhetorical question, she knew, but she couldn’t help herself. “A scared one,” she said quietly. “Oliver, it wasn’t your fault. You can’t blame yourself. And your mother knew that. She knew you were hurting. She didn’t blame you, either. I know she didn’t.”

 _How do you know?_  The question was unspoken between them. 

“It was then that I realized what I might be capable of, under the right pressures. That I could really hurt someone if I wanted to. Even someone I really cared about.” He looked at her, directly at her, his eyes the same blue as the sky above them as it slowly started to turn from night to dawn. The lightning had stopped, the wind had quietened, and the only sound now was the rain, spraying a fine mist over their faces. What she saw in them was the same intensity there always had been, a steady seriousness that took her breath away each time he looked at her like that, like she was the only thing in the world that mattered in that very moment. 

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked softly, her fingers reaching for the thin material of his t-shirt, holding on tightly, wanting to feel the warmth of his skin. She traced the mark left behind by Ra’s al Ghul’s sword, running the tip of her index finger along the raised edge of the scar through the thin fabric, and didn’t miss the way his breathing changed, the way his heartbeat sped up. It was still a difficult subject between them, but they were getting better at talking about the bad stuff. Slowly but surely. 

He contemplated her question for a moment, reaching out to wrap a curl of her hair around his finger, then letting it go, the way a child might play with an unfamiliar object. There was something sweetly innocent in the action that made her want to hold his body closer to her, to shield him from whatever it was that still lingered in the dark parts of his mind, things he wasn’t ready to express yet but trusted that she would wait until he was. 

“I’m done keeping things from you, Felicity. I want you to know everything - about me, about the things I’ve done, the things I’ve seen. I don’t want to withhold anything from you any more. I’m done lying.” There was a sincerity in his voice that left her in no doubt that he was telling her the truth; but there was also pain there, laced in with the honesty with which he told her this, betraying how difficult this was for him, to be honest with her the way he wanted to be. 

Shuffling down a little on the arm of the chair, Felicity lay her head on Oliver’s shoulder, her hair tickling his jaw. She listened to the sound of his breathing, followed the rise and fall of his broad chest through her fingerprint-and-rain-smudged glasses. He shifted to embrace her, his arms circling her waist, holding her close. 

“This is nice,” she sighed happily, her voice somewhat muffled by his t-shirt. “There was a time when I thought that the only way you’d ever hold me like this would be in my fantasies.” 

She felt the rumble of his laugh, deep in his chest, and blushed, thankful that he couldn’t see her red cheeks. “Forget I said that,” she mumbled, pressing her face into his chest. “I’m just going to never ever speak in front of you ever again.”

“That would be a shame, since I happen to like hearing you babble,” Oliver replied warmly, smiling into her hair, inhaling the scent of her shampoo and the lingering staticky smell of the storm. “It’s one of the many things I love about you, Felicity Smoak.”

“You’re just saying that because you’ve seen me naked,” Felicity protested playfully, then groaned as she realized what she’d said -  _again_. “The next time we pass any kind of craft supply store, I’m buying a needle and thread so that I can sew my lips shut.”

“I’d rather you not do that, actually,” Oliver said, humouring her, the way he always did when she was embarrassed of her own inability to keep from putting her foot in her mouth. “I need you to have full use of your lips for what I plan on doing with them when we’re both dry and aren’t slowly catching our death of cold from sitting outside in a thunderstorm.”

The implications of his word weren’t lost on her, and  _oh_ , did she like what he was suggesting - very much so, in fact. But first, they had to move out of the chair. And possibly change into dry clothes. And maybe take a shower, because she hated the way that rain dried on her skin, making it feel tight and itchy.

Maybe Oliver could join her. 

Felicity lifted her head expectantly, a smile playing around the corners of her lips. “Does this mean you’ll come back inside with me?”

His own smile matched hers. 

“If it’s you asking,” he said, “always.”


End file.
